I entered chat tonight when Barb, Patty and later Marcia were there. Although I could see them in the room, they obviously couldn't see me or anything I was typing. Sometimes I long for the days when we just used technology that worked and we had lots of folks chatting using IRC. I really believe that one of the reasons so few members use chat any longer is that:
1) It takes forever to load.
2) sometimes (like tonight) it simply doesn't work
3) When it does work, it tends to kick people off for no particular reason.
Sure there have been nights when it worked for an hour or so without problems, but I tend to get tired of trying when I only have about a 30% chance of trouble free chatting.
Rich - We are currently out of town and Drew will look at this when we get home.
On a side note (and I hope this doesn't sound cranky as I am tired and getting ready to travel home) Drew really tries hard to make everyone happy on this site. I know that there are some people that long for the "simpler" days but mIRC was not always an easy beast to contend with and some people had a hard time setting it up and or learning the commands. I know that some people wish for the old board and the old chat but technology moves forward and Drew has worked at getting our site out there and trying to get new members to contribute to our community. We have had so many great people join since the move to the new board and who knows if there would have found us on the old forum. It just makes our family bigger and more accessible to the dachshund community so that we can give support and share in the good and bad times with as many dachshund lovers as possible. Anyway...I'll get off my soapbox LOL :soapbox:! Have a great evening everyone.
I have no doubt that there are people who think the new chat is wonderful. Making chat more accessible is a worthy goal. It isn't working. True, clicking on a link is a somewhat easier than downloading an IRC client and learning to use it but IRC has been around since the earliest days of the internet and all the bugs are ironed out. Frankly, I am at the end of my patience with this chat. Continuing to make the attempt, week after week, to use it only to be completely successful on very few attempts is only making me think it is more trouble than it is worth.
I certainly appreciate all the trouble Drew has gone to in the effort to get this thing up and running, but I am very aware of the frustrations of trying to support technology that isn't really ready or reliable when there is a reliable alternative readily available that is pretty much bullet proof. All that is needed in that case is a tutorial on how to install the client and find the chatroom.
As for myself - when Saturday night rolls around, I have better things to do than beat my head against the annoying wall that is this chat.